Recent advances in automatic alignment system for the National Ignition Facility

Karl Wilhelmsen; Abdul A. S. Awwal; Dan Kalantar; Richard Leach; Roger Lowe-Webb; David McGuigan; Vicki Miller Kamm

doi:10.1117/12.878496

18 February 2011 Recent advances in automatic alignment system for the National Ignition Facility

Karl Wilhelmsen, Abdul A. S. Awwal, Dan Kalantar, Richard Leach, Roger Lowe-Webb, David McGuigan, Vicki Miller Kamm

Proceedings Volume 7916, High Power Lasers for Fusion Research; 79160O (2011) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.878496
Event: SPIE LASE, 2011, San Francisco, California, United States

Abstract

The automatic alignment system for the National Ignition Facility (NIF) is a large-scale parallel system that directs all 192 laser beams along the 300-m optical path to a 50-micron focus at target chamber in less than 50 minutes. The system automatically commands 9,000 stepping motors to adjust mirrors and other optics based upon images acquired from high-resolution digital cameras viewing beams at various locations. Forty-five control loops per beamline request image processing services running on a LINUX cluster to analyze these images of the beams and references, and automatically steer the beams toward the target. This paper discusses the upgrades to the NIF automatic alignment system to handle new alignment needs and evolving requirements as related to various types of experiments performed. As NIF becomes a continuously-operated system and more experiments are performed, performance monitoring is increasingly important for maintenance and commissioning work. Data, collected during operations, is analyzed for tuning of the laser and targeting maintenance work. Handling evolving alignment and maintenance needs is expected for the planned 30-year operational life of NIF.

Citation Download Citation

Karl Wilhelmsen, Abdul A. S. Awwal, Dan Kalantar, Richard Leach, Roger Lowe-Webb, David McGuigan, and Vicki Miller Kamm "Recent advances in automatic alignment system for the National Ignition Facility", Proc. SPIE 7916, High Power Lasers for Fusion Research, 79160O (18 February 2011); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.878496

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